I love how building contractors make sure to build
everything to a chest high specification out of bullet proof material. What I learned from video games is that if
someone is going to shoot at me, all I need to is duck behind a suitable structure
and wait for the enemy to reload.
Sometimes you get tired of shooting something until it’s just a pile of
meat and would rather it exploded instead. Today we fight an enemy that only
understands 1’s and 0’s.
Binary Domain is a pretty solid third person shooter from
Sega. That’s right, those four blue
letters that were relevant at the turn of the millennium. Sega has been quiet for the most part but
they have released a few notable games that should be played. Binary Domain was released at the end of
February 2012 to kind of a whimper. I
don’t think it was on any American gamer’s radar, I think I saw a Youtube add
for it before it released. It’s too bad,
the premise is that there are many corporations that create androids and it’s illegal
to make any that are non-discernible from regular humans. Of course there’s an evil corporation producing
human doppelgangers against international doctrine and you need to stop it with
your team of international special ops group that specializes in shooting
robots; a Rust Crew. Every inner 12 year
old boy just wet his pants reading that sentence and the rest of you had a
flashback to Battlestar Galactica.
Because of games like Gears of War and Uncharted there are
some really solid templates to model a cover based third person shooter and
Domain delivers in this respect. There is a voice activated squad control
system that I never used because I didn’t bother to hook up a mic but the game
functions just fine using on screen button prompts. Shooting robots is the meat
of the action here, and it is awesome.
You get points in the form of credits to spend on weapon upgrades and
passive abilities for killing enemies and get bonuses for destroying multiple
limbs, performing head shots, melee attacking, kill streaks, etc. It literally pays to vary your approach in
annihilating robots; also head shots will make most enemies blindly fire at
their allies. After so many years of
shooting targets that bleed it’s nice to just blast something that showers sparks
and explosions everywhere.
There’s a story here, and it’s pretty generic. If you have been playing video games or
watching sci fi for the last decade nothing in the narrative here is going to
surprise you. What will impress you are
the boss encounters. We’ve been used to
having the equivalent of a boss fight being destroying wave after wave of enemy,
a “mega-intense” set piece, or a final boss that’s just a well placed head
shot. Binary Domain gets it right with
huge bosses with multiple destructible parts.
There is never a lack of something to shoot bullets or a rocket at. I also really appreciated that the final boss
felt like a final boss instead just being the “next encounter” to get to the
credits.
The characters are pretty grounded in stereotypes and that’s
okay. The main character is a Sergeant
from the USA who’s pretty buff until you see the American “black guy” who’s
partnered with him; we’re talking a Barret to Cloud scenario here. Britain has sent
in the highest ranking officer (a Captain) and a hardcore woman who really
likes explosives while China adds a single sniper who is really good at her
job; but France is the real winner here, they sent an android named Cain who is
freaking awesome. As a former member of
the military myself, I find it really amusing that the USA only sent in two
Sergeants while every other nation sent some sort of officer. There’s really no relevance to it other than
I’ve been that Sergeant that pulls the majority of the weight in a duty section
before. Each party member has an upgradable weapon and a bank of passive
abilities to make them more effective in combat.
Binary Domain has been “free” on the Playstation Plus service
for a while and you have done yourself a disservice if you haven’t played
it. Hey, I paid for my copy and was extremely
happy with it. There just doesn’t seem
to be as much of a niche for that not quite AAA title that is still solid; this
will go down on the “hidden gems” lists that people will rediscover in ten
years. I’m glad this title got released
in English, play it!
